Competitive Strategy is concerned with managing the development and competitive position of the business enterprise in order to ensure its survival and long-term success. Every firm must create and sustain a competitive advantage if it is to survive and prosper. This course provides frameworks, tools and concepts to help students analyze and understand the creation and sustainability of competitive advantage. 

Political, economic, demographic and social environments differ and evolve across industries. Industries differ in the extent to which they provide opportunities for sustained profitability. Industries also evolve over time, providing firms with continuously changing opportunities and threats. The first section of the course examines the external (industry) environment.

While industry analysis provides firms insights into what they must do to succeed, it does not shed much light on what they can do. Resource and capability analysis provides an insight into firms’ strengths and weaknesses (as they relate to the external environment). An understanding of internal strengths enables firms to fully exploit and build their capabilities to compete successfully, while an understanding of internal weaknesses suggests recommendations for improvment. The second section of the course focuses examines the internal environment.

Firms in an industry jockey for position through their actions and interactions. Every firm seeks to obtain a unique and sustainable competitive position through an appropriate configuration of its assets and products in relation to the external environment in order to generate superior value for its customers. The third section of the course examines competitive advantage and competitive positioning.
Finally, firms need to understand their nonmarket environments, or the external forces that lie “beyond the market.” Laws, regulations, institutions, and societal norms structure and shape market competition, and fovernments, regulators, courts, the media, non-governmental organizations, and activists all affect how firms compete and whether certain resources and capabilities are valuable. The fourth section of the course offers a brief introduction of the nonmarket environment.

Course materials consist of journal articles, notes, and cases. Journal articles represent some of the most popular Harvard Business Review articles on strategy and strategic concepts, and are designated HBS in the syllabus. Journal articles require registration and purchase and are available at the HBS course. The cost for the HBS course material is roughly $40.